Tag Jamie Smart

Flember: The Golden Heart

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Flember: The Golden Heart
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books

Jamie Smart brings his superb Flember series to a close with a spell-binding adventure, full of inventiveness surprises at almost every turn of the page, as well as illustrations of characters and diagrams that add to the story.

On account of the heinous Iola Gray and her sinister plans, Flember Island is in grave danger. Can Dev P. Everdew and his lovable red giant robot bear, Boja possibly save the island and restore it to a place of peace and magic? Assuredly he will face numerous challenges, both physical and mental. Imagine having an angry wolf standing over you glaring with its red eyes, and baring its sharp black teeth with strings of spit glistening between them.

Yes there are scary moments aplenty but also lots of humour, not to mention a fair few farts courtesy of Boja. Add to all this, that the book is great for empathy building; and what Jamie Smart has done yet again is to create an unputdownable, thought-provoking book with a hugely satisfying conclusion that Flember fans will love.

Dev. his brother Santoro and Boja will be greatly missed but you can always go back and start reading the entire series over again.

Max & Chaffy: What A Delicious Discovery!

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Max & Chaffy: What A Delicious Discovery!
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books

As this story begins Max and Chaffy are sound asleep in the lighthouse but then a massive explosion wakes them from their slumbers: their help is needed urgently. The sound emanated from the bakery where Crumble lives and she’s having a crisis of confidence. Her new recipe has gone completely wrong and apparently so have her other recent recipes. The last time one went according to plan was when she was at baking school with her best friend and baking partner, Sprinkles.

Sprinkles now lives far away on Food Island and Max resolves to see the two reunited. Captain Foghorn refuses to take them in his boat but fortunately along comes Orlando Pig in a new hot air balloon. With thoughts of some possible new chaffies for Max’s book off they fly and after a somewhat hazardous landing at their destination, the friends are greeted by Mayor Chomp Chomp. He informs them that the Grand Food Festival is taking place but every recipe the chefs prepare ends up tasting disgusting.

Unsurprisingly Max offers to help find out why, the first stop being Pasta Hills. The pasta looks good but as Pasta Pete explains everything is going wrong.

Chaffy disappears and reappears to report a displaced Burger Chaffy. And so begins a concatenation of brand new chaffy findings in different locations on the island. There’s one in Veggie Park, another in Sushi Land and one more in Bakersville – brand new flavoursome combinations galore. But in Bakersville Crumble’s old pal Sprinkles just isn’t coming up with the goodies any more: time for them to start inspiring one another all over again. As for the Grand Food Festival – who will collect the winners’ cup?

A tasty treat that includes a ‘Help Max find Chaffy’ spread at the end of each part and a help Sprinkles locate his lost ingredients. With its brightly hued panels, established fans of Max and Chaffy will gobble up this fifth book and the two will likely win lots of new followers too

Flember: The Secret Book

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Flember: The Secret Book
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books

Flember is a mysterious island, the setting for this story: it’s also the life force on which the island is dependent. On this island in a village called Eden lives Dev, who loves to invent things. We first meet him as he’s jumping from a steep cliff face wearing wings made of chicken feathers and cheese powered boots. He’s only sixty-three per cent sure these inventions will work, but work they do sufficiently well to enable him to chase and catch a flemberbug and land in the market place to the relief of his mother. (It’s from her that we discover that books are banned in Eden).

Further experiments ensue and following a carrot incident and its resulting chaos, the Mayor bans Dev from Flember Day, instructing him to clean out the antique shop he wrecked. In this shop Dev comes upon lots of books, in particular an ancient volume containing information about Flember, the life force and its titular Island. Excited by his discovery, he persuades little Mina, owner of a teddy bear to allow him to bring the bear to life to help clean up the mess and this he proceeds to do in true Frankenstein fashion.

This turns out to be his greatest invention in size at least. But despite Boja the robot bear being built to protect the village, with its unrestrained impulses, it ends up causing mayhem instead, and giving grief to both Dev’s mother and his elder brother Santoro, a member of the Youth Guild who has big ambitions. Moreover Dev and said Boja Bear with his Flember consumption have used up almost all that’s available. Now what? Can the village be fixed? Think waffles …

With crazy village characters aplenty, this story is overflowing with ideas, incidents and weird humour but equally important is the message concerning taking responsibility for your mistakes. I look forward to the next adventure of Dev and Boja.

Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to Unruly Activities / Bunny vs Monkey The Whopping World of Puzzles

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Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to Unruly Activities
Louie Stowell
Walker Books

Loki’s fifth diary is rather different from his previous ones. and that’s on account of his having played too many pranks of the poo-related kind around the house. As a consequence Hemdall has challenged Loki to find ways to keep himself entertained and sent him off to his room so to do. These ways must definitely not be of the messy ie poo variety. Tedious or what? It shouldn’t be very hard though as Loki is a clever god and aided and abetted by his pals, he amasses a fun assortment of puzzles, quizzes, games and drawing activities.
There is for instance an Insult Generator with which to enjoy insulting your nearest and dearest, and Thor’s non-violent means of winning a fight to contemplate and possibly test at a later date- it’s a bum thundertron.

It’s true to say that there are activities for anyone and everyone and you don’t even need to have read the other Loki diaries to enjoy this one.

More fun and games of the interactive puzzling kind in


Bunny vs Monkey The Whopping World of Puzzles
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books

Herein Bunny, Monkey et al visit a secret theme park deep in their woods and human puzzlers join them as they discover this lost location. Once there they will enjoy all sorts of tricky mazes, word searches, crosswords of the cross words kind, or even try their hand or paw at creating squared paper on which to ‘embiggen’ a character like Pig.

Just the thing for a rainy day or with holidays approaching, a book to take on a long car journey to stimulate your little grey cells instead of constantly fiddling with your phone.

Max & Chaffy: Hunt for the Pirate’s Gold! / Magic Pickle and the Roots of Doom

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Max & Chaffy: Hunt for the Pirate’s Gold!
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books

From the creator of Bunny vs Monkey and Looshkin books, the Max & Chaffy books (this is the fourth), are a less demanding read. Set on Animal Island they feature Max and her pal cum sidekick Chaffy who, having now become official members of the chaffy finding club, are very enthusiastic about sallying forth on their next chaffy hunt. (For the uninitiated Chaffies are small spherical beings with one and a half ears and like to eat lettuce, most of them anyway.)

As they’re wandering on the beach the friends come across Foghorn. He offers to take them in his boat to a secret part of the Island, reachable only by sea. Once there, the threesome rapidly becomes a foursome when Chaffy finds a bobbly creature that the rather curmudgeonly Foghorn insists is not actually a chaffy. Max suggests it’s a Puffa Chaffy and soon encased in special underwater bubbles,

Puffa Chaffy, Max and Chaffy embark on an underwater foray involving a map in a bottle, the possibility of treasure and a pirate captain related to Foghorn. It’s an adventure that Foghorn cannot resist joining once he discovers a personal connection. He even lets his kindheartedness come to the surface whenever Puffa Chaffy feels scared and all ends happily with the finding of not one but two new chaffies.

With its vibrant colour palette and a text almost exclusively in speech bubbles, this is a delight – engaging and full of charm. Included too are some puzzle extras..

Rather more complex is

Magic Pickle and the Roots of Doom
Scott Morse
Scholastic

Herein you will find the titular Magic Pickle that flies around sporting a large star on its head, and his young human sidekick, Jo Jo. She wears a purple onesie with a unicorn horn.

When Magic Pickle is approached by Herb Cloverson, a decidedly malodorous character that is far from happy with life as a garlic clove, Pickle is rather dismissive. Then the clove is itself approached by the evil tuber, Square Root, who says he’s looking for a friend. So Herb Cloverson becomes Square Root’s sidekick and the two set about removing the star from Magic Pickle and thus taking away his power. With the goal achieved and the star on Square Root’s head, he sets about amassing an underground army.

Meanwhile the powerless Pickle is thoroughly downcast and it’s left to Jo-Jo to encourage him to fight back. By now Herb Cloverson has realised that he’s being used and hence is still looking for a friend. So too is Magic Pickle, so can they put things right between them? And will justice finally prevail? Perhaps, with some input from the Information Leek who offers assistance to Jo-Jo, together with the power of teamwork

Replete with veggie-related puns, it’s funny, clever, crazily compelling and diverting in a daft way.

Max Meow: Cat Crusader / Bunny vs Monkey: The Impossible Pig!

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Max Meow: Cat Crusader
John Gallagher
Puffin Books

There’s a feline superhero on the prowl It’s Max Meow, resident of the ‘furr-ociously cool city of Kittyopolis’. Max is an aspiring vlogger and podcast host and his best friend is human scientist Mindy Microbe whom he visits in her secret lab, the intention being to make a science video. Mindy has acquired a rare space meatball, which is suddenly snatched away. by a robot. The friends give chase, seize it back and when Max takes a bite of it, he finds himself with superpowers; with the ability to fly, super strength and a fiery tail, he becomes the Cat Crusader.

It transpires that the robot Reggie was sent by the villainous Agent M, a mouse, and Big Boss who want the meatball for their own heinous purposes.

Max finds that being a super hero is hungry work and so he and Mindy head for their favourite restaurant to sate their appetites. This leads via some hot sauce, to a falling out between the two of them and they stop speaking to one another.

Both tricky and sticky situations occur with the result that Max realises that superpowers alone will not be sufficient to save the day and indeed, save Kittyopolis itself.

Action-packed, and with pawsful of wacky humour, this pacy tale cleverly sets the scene for the second book in the series. Fans of visual story-telling especially will lap it up.

Bunny vs Monkey: The Impossible Pig!
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books

I’m sure for readers of comics and graphic novels, the name Jamie Smart and his anarchic Bunny vs Monkey series needs no introduction and this is a paperback edition of a previously published hardcover documenting the wild and wacky escapades of Bunny et al in the woods through the four seasons from spring through to winter, concluding with a gathering for Christmas lunch. With its frenetic pacing and giggle-inducing gags throughout, enthusiasts will relish the on-going daftness.

Off-the wall comedy for primary readers doesn’t get better than this.

Looshkin: Honk If You See It! / Agent Harrier: This Book Will Self Destruct

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Looshkin: Honk If You See It!
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books

Billed at the outset as ‘Looshkin – A Comprehensive Catalogue of His Rise to Fame, this is the third volume of delectably daft doings of the craziest cat in the world, created by maestro of madness Jamie Smart in his characteristic frenetic fashion.

Readers will delight in such doings as the blue moggy character tormenting the grey suited, bowler-hatted Mr Johnson, as well as a clown who thinks a good gimmick is to bring a large box of crabs to a children’s party and let the little nippers loose among the guests. Then there’s the episode of the lost fish finger that answers to the name of Sharon, the accidental morphing of Looshkin into a duck – well maybe and the proper ducks were certainly less than impressed. And just in case anybody you know is undergoing a vampire attack, they might well take a leaf out of our feline friend’s book and bombard it with chicken nuggets.

Stupidly brilliant or brilliantly stupid, whichever way you want to put it, youngsters will relish it. Adults? Well, they may want to take heed of this aroma alert: beware, there are a considerable number of farts between the covers of this book,

some even delivered straight to a certain person’s doorstep in a large cardboard box.

Agent Harrier: This Book Will Self Destruct
Ben Sanders
Little Tiger

Danger alert: with the book set to self-destruct in just five minutes, thanks to a bomb planted within its pages, Agent Harrier must follow the red wire to defuse it before it’s too late and everyone is blasted to smithereens. The clock is ticking and it seems he’s started chasing a red herring.

Though maybe that could turn out not to be such a terrible idea after all. Want to know who was responsible for planting the bomb? Then you’ll need to get your paws on a copy of the book super fast.
With zany daftness visual and verbal, from cover to cover, this punny spy caper with a twist or two, presented graphic novel style, is just right for newly independent readers.

Bunny vs Monkey: Bunny Bonanza / Groosham Grange: the graphic novel

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Bunny vs Monkey: Bunny Bonanza!
Jamie Smart
David Fickling Books


If you’ve yet to make the acquaintance of Bunny et al. these wacky short stories (‘strips’) of the woodland dwelling creatures including the megolomaniac Monkey first appeared in The Phoenix comic. David Fickling Books published several compilation books of these and then bind-ups of which this is the latest.


As the new year begins down in the woods, all is well except that Bunny is inexplicably missing. We join the gang on their search for their floppy-eared pal. As they hunt high and low they encounter several imposters: there’s Robot Bunny, Neanderbunny, Old Bunny aka Algernon Withersnap the Third, Bunny Law, Shadow Bunny and even weirder, Not Bunny: Maybe Bunny is merely suffering from acute amnesia or are these other leporine forms due to some other phenomenon. Most important, having gone right through the year, will the real Bunny return to take possession of his residence?


Anarchic, brim full of high jinks (and some decidedly low ones), frenetic and with a plethora of giggle-inducing surreal happenings, this bumper volume left this reviewer’s head spinning.

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Groosham Grange: the graphic novel
Anthony Horowitz, adapted by Max L’Hermenier, illustrated by Clément Lefèvre
Walker Books


One of Horowitz’s classics is transformed into a hilarious graphic novel version.
We follow David Eliot from the time his parents, despairing over the fact that their son has been expelled from his school Beton College, decide to send him to Groosham Grange, an establishment in a gothic castle on Skull Island with a reputation for sorting out rebellious pupils.


Not long after his arrival David overhears a conversation taking place in the headmaster’s study to the effect that something very nasty is going to happen to him and possibly the new friends Jill and Jeffery whom he met on the train..


They discover that every night the other pupils go to the library and then disappear. The three really must make an escape plan though it may not be possible for anyone to escape Groosham Grange.


Full of thrills and spooky chills, this is weird and strangely gripping.